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| Art Monthly Australia July cov… |
The Prime Minister of Australia, Kevin Rudd, didn’t like the picture Art Monthly had published on its front cover. The picture is a detail from a photograph by Polixeni Papapetrou of her daughter Olympia at the age of 6. The little girl is naked.
It’s still not really clear to me what Mr Rudd doesn’t like. The BBC quotes him as saying “Frankly, I can’t stand this stuff”, which doesn’t clarify matters. But perhaps clarity is not something to expect from a politician? He is further quoted as saying “A little child cannot answer for themselves about whether they wish to be depicted in this way.” To which the subject, Olympia Nelson (now 11 years old) responded: "I'm really, really offended by what Kevin Rudd had to say about this picture ... I love the photo so much."
The picture is called “Olympia as Lewis Carroll's Beatrice Hatch before White Cliffs”, and comes from a series, Dreamchild, which references Lewis Carroll’s photographs. The pictures in Dreamchild were made between 2002 and 2003 and have been exhibited in Australia and America.
You can read the BBC’s article here and see the offending photo on Polixeni Papapetrou’s Internet site here. Compare with Carroll’s original photo by going here.
Apparently all this reignited a debate in Australia about political censorship of the arts which started off in May when Kevin Rudd managed to get an exhibition of photographs by Bill Henson closed before it opened. Henson’s moody photos of 12 and 13 year olds are far from Papapetrou’s pictures of her children, but even here I find it impossible to understand what Kevin Rudd found “revolting” (again quoted by the BBC). If you don’t know Henson’s work, you can see some examples of the pictures that were banned here (though it looks to me like there are fewer here now than there were on Tuesday).
Anyway, having read all of that I set off for Borås and spent a somewhat frustrating day looking at the town’s sculpture exhibition. (You can read about that on my other blog here.) But in the local park I came across this sculpture, which I am fairly sure is not modern, but has been displayed in a public park for a good many years without either provoking public outrage or stimulating paedophilia.
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I offer them to Mr Rudd for his delectation and delight! Methinks the gentleman doth protest too much. Perhaps he needs to discuss his own sexuality with a good psychiatrist?
Paul Schubert says:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tin_Drum_%28film%29#Controversy
Supercargo says:
I think Anthony Burgess made the best point on this subject in "A Clockwork Orange", and Stanley Kubrick illustrated it in his film of the book. The book's anti-hero, Alex, gets high, violent and aroused listening to Beethoven's setting of Schiller's "Ode to Joy" (An die Freude). Does that make Beethoven a pornographer? Or Schiller? Burgess and Kubrick are asking more or less the same question as I am, (more dramatically and more artistically of course). They are doing it through the medium of print and celluloid respectively. Does that make them pornographers? Anyone who reads the book or watches the film of "A Clockwork Orange", or listens to or sings along with Beethoven's music and Schiller's Ode, and thinks of Alex's arousal - are they participating in a pornographic act? (There must be an awful lot of them - the book is a modern classic and the "Ode to Joy" is now the EU's anthem!) The whole thing becomes absurd.
It's exactly the same kind of absurdity that Kevin Rudd has got himself caught up in with the Art Monthly Australia July issue.
The original photograph was made by a mother of her daughter. If a parent cannot take a photograph of her child, naked, without being accused of pornography, there are an awful lot of pornographers walking around - virtually every parent that ever owned a camera I'd guess.
The photographer of the original picture was an artist, not only did she pose the photograph, but she also chose to reference a photograph of Lewis Carroll's from 100 years or more earlier. Is that that what makes the photograph pornography? The posing? The referencing? (It's certainly true that Carroll's photographs have raised some questions about his sexuality, but how does that rub off on Polixeni Papapetrou?)
Was it the original publication of the photograph that made it pornography? But the photo has been exhibited in Australia and in America, without attracting any accusations of indecency as far as I'm aware.
So perhaps the act of pornography was actually the selection of the photo and its use on the front cover of the magazine? Well, it was deliberately chosen to illustrate an article (by Donald Brook) with the title "Art and (not or) Pornography". Judging by the summary here
www.artmonthly.org.au/article.asp?contentID=666
the article is an intellectual discussion of the issue of pornography. Is the discussion of what constitutes pornography itself a pornographic act?
So many questions, so few answers. “Frankly, I can’t stand this stuff,” says Mr Rudd. and condemns everyone in the chain, Art Australia Monthly, Donald Brook, Polixeni Papapetrou, Lewis Carroll, Anthony Burgess, Stanley Kubrick, Ludwig van Beethoven, Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller, little Olympia Nelson, Beatrice Hatch, everyone who ever read or watched "A Clockwork Orange" without protesting about it and every parent who has ever taken a picture of his or her naked child. Under these circumstances, what value or even sense does the word pornography (I'm sorry "stuff") have?